A review of cleaner production methods for the manufacture of methanol

Growing population and expanding economies are important causes of increasing global energy demand. In wake of the continuous hike in the petroleum prices, depleting world resources and increased constant threat to planet's environment, the need for environment friendly alternative fuels has augmented many times. Methanol has been in the limelight over the past few years. High production cost, catalyst deactivation, economy of scale, huge energy requirements are the leading bottlenecks, which should be resolved to move towards the cleaner production. To address the issues, various reactors and their configurations have been modelled over years and the need to summarise all these efforts seems obligatory. One-dimensional to three-dimensional models for traditional packed bed reactors to processes for direct conversion of natural gas to methanol is available in literature. The presented study is an attempt to compile most of these efforts in order to guide future work in this area for cleaner and healthier environment.